


I used to turn my anger in

by sulkybender



Series: Fatherlord universe [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gay Sokka (Avatar), Gay Zuko (Avatar), Hurt Zuko (Avatar), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Protective Sokka (Avatar), Sleepy Cuddles, Sokka is all sass all the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulkybender/pseuds/sulkybender
Summary: “I'm sorry,” Zuko says immediately. “I didn't—I couldn't wash today.”“I like it,” Sokka says. “You smell like you.”“I smell like midlife crisis.”“Okay, so first of all, didn’t Sozin live to be like ninety? You aren’t allowed to have a midlife crisis at twenty-eight.”“I’m allowed to—”“Second,” Sokka continues, moving the five cards to Zuko's hand, “you’ve basically been having midlife crises since you were what, eight? So I reject the whole premise.”“That’s not—”“And third, it’s your move.”--When Zuko has Bad Days, Sokka is ready with the world's dumbest card game.Sequel to "Fatherlord," where Mai and Zuko couldn't work things out, but it turns out Sokka and Zuko are perfect together. Pure comfort and snuggles.
Relationships: Past Mai/Zuko - Relationship, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Fatherlord universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924207
Comments: 13
Kudos: 222





	I used to turn my anger in

**Author's Note:**

> As promised: a snuggly, supportive Zukka one-shot set a few years after “Fatherlord.” 
> 
> The title comes from—wait for it—therapy. Some people turn their anger out and rage. And some people turn it in and wound themselves, often literally. So here’s a story about healing. 
> 
> Content warning: scars and blatantly imaginary card games.

Some days aren't outside days.

Zuko has those. He cancels his appointments—the meetings, the appearances—and asks for meals to be brought to him that he doesn't eat, and when there's nothing left to fuck up he lays facedown in his bed, trying to stifle the emotion.

In the evening Sokka arrives with a pack of cards. He doesn't say anything, just splits the deck and pulls off his shirt. Then he unfastens Zuko's tunic and folds him, bare-chested, into his lap. Skin to skin, the kind of pure body heat that makes Zuko’s breath trip in his throat. He is entirely undone.

“Hey sweetheart,” Sokka says. “Pick a suit.”

His hands are knitted around Zuko's stomach, holding the flutter of his heartbeat.

“Blood,” Zuko says hoarsely.

“I’ll take gold, then.”

Sokka fans the cards over the bedspread. It's a simple game, a little mindless. And it's mainly pointless, since they can see each other's hands. It's the kind of game you play when your mind is mostly consumed with the business of eating itself alive.

“Draw five,” Sokka says, and nuzzles the Fire Lord’s hair

“I'm sorry,” Zuko says immediately. “I didn't—I couldn't wash today.”

“I like it,” Sokka says. “You smell like you.”

“I smell like midlife crisis.”

“Okay, so first of all, didn’t Sozin live to be like ninety? You aren’t allowed to have a midlife crisis at twenty-eight.”

“I’m allowed to—”

“Second,” Sokka continues, moving the five cards to Zuko's hand, “you’ve basically been having midlife crises since you were what, eight? So I reject the whole premise.”

“That’s not—”

“And third, it’s your move.”

Zuko shrinks up, small, barely breathing.

“I don’t want to,” he says quietly. “I can’t do this today, Sokka.”

Sokka runs his fingers gently down Zuko’s chest. He loves the lines of him, the dips and scars, the soft flesh that trembles when Sokka touches him and he inhales sharply, stung by love.

“Hey,” Sokka says. "You know you’re my favorite, right?”

“Draw two,” Zuko mumbles. He vanishes into Sokka's chest again. 

“Okay, a compromise,” Sokka says. “If you really want an existential crisis.”

“Generous of you.”

“There’s a theory of the universe where there was one big expansion—essentially a giant explosion—and a theory where there’s been a series of continual expansions. You’re just the second theory.”

“I don't want to explode anymore.” Zuko covers Sokka's hand with his own. It's thin and cold, a line that vanishes where it meets Sokka’s skin.

“Are you the first?” Zuko asks.

“The what?”

“The first theory. The one explosion.”

Sokka is quiet for a minute.

“Yeah. I guess I am. The whole finding-the-Avatar-and-helping-him-save-the-world-at-fifteen thing will do that to you.”

“Everything else probably pales in comparison,” Zuko says softly. 

Sokka ruffles his hair. “Not everything.”

Zuko passes Sokka his cards. There's a stunned look to the way his hands move, the fingers shaking slightly, nothing working right. If anyone ever doubted that depression was real, that it could dismantle you as easily as a blow to the head, they'd just have to look at Zuko to be proven wrong.

Not that Sokka would let anyone anywhere near Zuko. Not when he's like this.

He folds his legs around the Fire Lord’s, calves touching calves, their arms aligned. He'll swallow him up, keep him safe, negotiate with all the monsters inside and out. It's ludicrous to think he can do it. It’s obvious that he needs to.

“I keep thinking about what I did to her,” Zuko says.

“Zuko.”

“Don't Zuko me.”

“Sweetiepants,” Sokka says, and he feels Zuko's smile against his skin. “We've been over this, baby. You didn't do anything to Mai.”

“I took her life away from her.”

Sokka ticks off the answers on his skin, an old litany.

“ _She_ wasn't happy. _You_ weren't happy. Together you were majorly not happy.”

“You're biased.”

“What, because I'm happy? I can be miserable if you want me to. If that'll make me objective on the topic. Draw six, I've got three of a kind.”

“I don't want you to be miserable,” Zuko says.

“And I don't want _you_ to be miserable. See? That's why we're so good together. That's why it worked out for the best.”

Sokka draws Zuko in again, pressing his lips into his greasy hair. The fresh-soap, lotioned, professional-Fire Lord smell is gone and he's just Zuko, warm and tired. When Zuko reaches for the cards Sokka catches his hand on the way back, lining fingers to fingers, reeling him in to kiss the soft skin at the base of his thumb.

“Mine,” Sokka says, still kissing him.

“I am,” Zuko says, but he has the saddest expression. He hides his face in Sokka’s chest again. When the question comes, it’s muffled.

“Do you think she's happy?”

“Honestly, I think Mai is the only one who knows if Mai is happy.”

It isn’t the answer Zuko wants, Sokka can tell, but it also isn’t the question he means to ask.

“What’s bothering you, sweetheart?”

“Fire Lords don't get divorced.” 

Sokka snorts.

“Yeah, they usually banish, imprison, or kill their wives instead.”

Zuko is very still.

“Oh gods, I'm a jerk.” Sokka squeezes Zuko's hands. “I'm sorry, baby. I'm the worst. Comparably, I'm trying to say, you're very sensible. Like compared to all the actual war criminals. Oh fuck, I'm talking myself into a ditch, aren't I?”

“I know my family's done worse,” Zuko says, “but that doesn't mean I did the right thing.”

Sokka is rubbing his knuckles, trying to get him warm.

“You remember the first time we kissed?”

“Yeah,” Zuko says. “Of course.”

“You were so little, baby.” His voice is very quiet. His hands settle around Zuko's belly, where there is the slightest pouch. Sokka loves to hold him there, the silky reassuring skin that means Zuko survived what he tried to do to himself. 

He thinks about the kiss, about undressing Zuko for the first time. The Fire Lord was thin and shaky, fingers yellow-knuckled, and there was a hunger in the sharp edges of his face, like he was being chiseled away by longing. His breath caught when Sokka eased back his tunic, like he was waiting for something.

That was when Sokka saw the scars.

“You'd just moved into the palace,” Zuko says.

It's hard for Sokka to imagine he hasn't always been here, but there was a time when living in the palace was a novelty. Sokka walked around staggered, intimidated, suddenly very sure he understood why Zuko always looked so uncomfortable. Everything was so grand and clean and high-ceilinged, like his understanding of heaven but decked out in severe red fabric. It was the red of a cut throat.

And there was Zuko, in robes that probably weighed more than he did, dragging himself to council sessions like a half-dead animal while everyone said _nothing_ , like it would be treasonous to point out that the Fire Lord needed time to go curl up in a friendly corner and lick his wounds.

Well. It _was_ treason, probably.

“You were dying, Zuko. And I was so angry with myself.”

“Why would you—”

“Because I had no idea!” Sokka says sharply. “I thought I cared so much about you and I thought I'd spent two weeks looking out for you, and I didn't know you were—that all that time you were—”

Zuko kisses him. He is an excellent kisser, steady and soft, and when he pulls back Sokka thinks that his face is simultaneously the most world-weary and earnest-looking he's ever seen, limp hair flopping over his eyes. Sokka pushes it back, getting a little shock of pleasure just by touching the silk of Zuko’s hair, the shell of his ear. It's a pleasure to touch him, to be near him.

It's incomprehensible that anyone could be in his presence and decide to hurt him. And yet people have done it, repeatedly.

“My point is, I never want you to be like that again,” Sokka says finally. "That's what I mean. And you haven't been. Not since—” 

He breaks off, kissing Zuko again. The fresh cuts, the ropes of flesh where he had been making the same marks for years, like a river slicing its path through the earth. It was the worst thing Sokka had ever seen in the least expected place, like opening the lid to an ordinary trunk and finding, where he expected to find winter clothing, a hole through the center of the world. You better be sure about this, Sokka told himself, and then he pulled Zuko close and kissed him because he was. He absolutely was.

No one was going to hurt this boy again.

He licks Zuko's neck.

“Don't sexualize me when I'm sad,” Zuko says, faintly because his whole face is pressed into Sokka's chest.

“I'm not sexualizing you. You come pre-sexualized. You're sexy.”

Nonetheless, he dries Zuko's neck respectfully.

“I am sorry for tasting your sexy neck.”

Zuko gives him a sly grin and licks his ear.

“I'm not actually upset.”

“That’s good,” Sokka says, “because I’m not really sorry.”

The thing is, no one in the palace knew anything about depression. Illness wasn't something without a physical trace, not in the palace, and if you weren't bleeding from an open wound with a hatchet clearly hanging off your arm, or sick with some recognized poison, there was nothing anyone in this place wanted to do for you. They were stoic, the explanation went, a proud people, but Sokka knew the truth and _raged_. They were all cowards, afraid to acknowledge it.

So for four years Zuko almost died, and then some idiot from the Water Tribe had the nerve to show up and hold him, and tell him absurd stories and bad jokes and theories about the origin of the universe, and play mindless card games. And now he was going to be okay.

He was more than okay. He was perfect.

“Two royal pairs,” Zuko says. “Draw six.”

Sokka is highly skeptical. “Is that a legal move?”

“I forgot to take my last turn.”

“You can't just, like, bank up your blood suites.”

“You can do it too if you want,” Zuko offers.

“ _Both_ of us cheating doesn't fix the problem,” Sokka says. “ _Neither_ of us cheating fixes the problem.” 

“You don't let me get away with anything,” Zuko complains.

Sokka kisses the soft hair at his temple, that heady body-heat smell driving him mad. He needs to be inside him, as close to Zuko as possible. For now Sokka settles for burying his face into his neck.

“Someone has to set limits around this place. It'd be anarchy without me and know it.”

Zuko snorts.

“It's anarchy _with_ you, you asshole.”

“It's anarchy but our card games will be _civilized_ , dammit.” 

By now it’s very late. He can feel Zuko flagging, shifting more of his body weight against him.

“Do you want something to eat,” Sokka says gently, “or should we just go to sleep?”

“Could you get persimmons?” The question is absurdly hesitant, like Sokka would say no.

“I can.”

“Ring for them,” Zuko says. “Don’t leave.”

“I won’t.” He kisses Zuko’s shoulder. “I don't know why you like them so much.” 

Zuko flushes.

“They remind me of things,” he says, flustered.

Sokka raises an eyebrow.

“Oh good, _things_.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m having fun with you, not at you, baby.” He kisses Zuko, lingering on his bottom lip, which is too soft and wonderful to let go. “Nice things, I hope.”

He feels Zuko’s smile against his mouth. 

“An explosion,” Zuko says.


End file.
